Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday December 06, 2017 @08:20PM
from the explain-like-I'm-five dept.

orgelspieler writes: My son paid for a copy of a novel on his iPad. When his school made it against the rules to bring iPads, he wanted to get the same book on his Kindle. I tried to explain that the format of his eBook was not readily convertible to the Kindle. So he tried to go on his schools online library app. He checked it out just fine, but ironically, the offline reading function only works on the now-disallowed iPads. Rather than paying Amazon $7 for a book I already own, and he has already checked out from the library, I found a bootleg PDF online. I tried to explain that he could just read that, but he freaked out. "That's illegal, Dad!" I tried to explain format shifting, and the injustice of the current copyright framework in America. Even when he did his own research, stumbling across EFF's website on fair use, he still would not believe me.

Have any of you fellow Slashdotters figured out a good way to navigate the moral, legal, and technological issues of copyright law, as it relates to the next generation of nerds? Interestingly, my boy seems OK with playing old video games on the Wayback Machine, so I don't think it's a lost cause.

Sometimes the DVD has special features that aren't on the Blu Ray, so the information on the Blu Ray is is not necessarily a strict superset of that on the DVD. The only way to be sure that your copy is an exact copy or strict subset of the original is to make the copy yourself.

No. Copyright is the right to *control* who may make copies. It is an artificial extension of the natural right that would have existed if the creator had never published it in the first place, and a public concession to respect copyright is required in order for it to work as intended, so that theoretically, creators rely on copyright to protect their works for some finite amount of tune and the general public is enriched by the infusion of creative works, instead of publishers resorting to self censorsh

The problem here isn't copyright or fair use or public domain or the (lack of) right to make a copy. The problem is the copyright holders not holding up their end of the copyright bargain.

They claim we're we're not literally buying their work, we're only buying a license to view their work. So we can't make copies for our friends. That's all fine and good. But if all we're buying is a license, then buying the iPad version should also entitle you to the Kindle version; and in fact all other versions.

If you have paid for a copy, format shifting is fair. Imagine it this way: an artist created a digital photo you liked, and you purchased a copy of his JPG, but wanted it in PNG. There is nothing wrong with changing formats of the copy you already licensed.

I'm happy for pirates making copies for distribution and profit to go to jail

That is just stupid. Copyright is a civil offence, and should be punished by fines, not jail time. America already imprisons four times as many people per capita as other countries. We don't need to start imprisoning even more people just for photocopying.

copies and format shifting for personal use _should_ be completely legal in all countries.

I see. So if I burn a DVD for myself, that would be perfectly legal, but if I make an extra copy for a friend I go to prison... even though it would be perfectly legal for my friend to make his own copy?

Format shifting is fair use no matter how hard the RIAA/MPAA tries to complain about it and interfere with it, especially on the moral principle side. The posters bigger problem seems to be that his son is unable to recognize that concept, where the letter of the law is manifestly unjust.

You started too late. You should have taught him what you wanted him to know before his teachers taught him what the RIAA and MPAA wanted him to know.

Also, you didn't format shift it, you downloaded it, and that download was not fair use.

The good news is that I don't think you did anything illegal. Copyright infringement involves making a copy without a license to make copies, which you did not do, and could not do, since you didn't have a copy in the first place.

Now, if you made a copy of the copy you downloaded, that might be something you could be sued for. But it isn't illegal unless you are making unlicensed copies commercially.

If you already have a copy, and then download a copy in another form, it is CONSTRUCTIVELY a format shift. It might take a good lawyer to make that stick, of course.

Life in the 100% non-constructive world is so impractical as to be almost unbearable, so we are all effectively quasi-criminals most the time, which doesn't matter until it does, and when that day comes, unfortunately, the system is rigged so that some of us can afford better justice than others.

My understanding is that they were uploading. Some of them possibly "settled" when they got the extortion letter. If there is a court case showing a ruling on a pure downloader, please cite it for me. I haven't heard of one.

The last time I did any serious research on this, that notion was accepted but hadn't ever been tested. Since it is the basis of trillions of dollars worth of economic activity, it is unlikely that any court could ever issue a sane ruling on the topic.

It is a farce. Such a scheme is not compatible with copyright as the framers understood it. Holding a book up to a mirror is just as much a copy as charging some capacitors, and just as much not what anyone could have meant by "copy" in copyright.

There is no God-given right prevent your work from being copied, either. In the US, copyright is founded on Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution. “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” If we determine that copyright laws are not in harmony with promoting science and art, we are justified in overturning those laws.

When I want to read paper books on my 1 month vacation to a remote island in the south pacific I have to lug them around with me. They take up space and add weight even when I'm done with them.

With digital books I can bring my entire library with me on my iPad and read whatever and whenever I want. And if I manage to find good Wifi somewhere I can even buy more books.

I've done trips both ways (lugging paper books around and downloading a ton of reading material to my iPad) and the latter is infinitely more preferable.

Aside from some special books I like to keep in my collection, I've transferred my entire library to digital and I couldn't be happier. I think the big "a ha" moment came for me shortly after I bought a kindle a decade ago. I ended up getting stuck in an airport overnight after a missed connection. Everything was closed. I was able to buy a book right on the spot to read while I waited for the first flight of the morning.

Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

This is theft. No fucking way do you hold the copyright on that document.

It's actually pretty brief and clear:
Article I Section 8. Clause 8 â" Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] âoeTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.â

Which tells you precisely nothing. The Constitution gives a very clear and concise motivational statement. Copyright is anything but. It's a highly negotiated morass of rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions catering to a multitude of special interests. It's the very definition of legislative bargaining.

You won't find anything that looks like a principle or rational public policy in copyright law. Just carve out after carve out, built on the lobbying power of each interest.

A good way to explain it to his son is Empire Strikes Back. Evil rules the universe. The good guys jump from one disaster to another, constantly on the run and getting picked apart. They can't catch a break.

Fourth, do not, as a layperson, try to teach another layperson anything about copyright. Nobody actually understands this stuff, nobody has read a recent case in the field, and nobody can keep straight any sound legal advice from what they read on places like slashdot. Then proceed to do what you want, as nobody goes after the little fish.

Second, call the school and complain that it's mega-stupid that they disallow iPads when their own online library app allows you to check out books in the iPad-supported format.

Venting to the school staff is not going to change anything. Besides, the kid is messing with his dad a little.

Interestingly, my boy seems OK with playing old video games on the Wayback Machine...

This is not a contradiction.

Most kids understand the spirit of rules and that rules can have many layers to them.

To explore this point, the dad just needs to give his kid the choice and tell him that since he doesn't want to bring the perfectly legally purchased format-shifted pdf ebook to school, he'll just have to read the entire book at home before it's covered in class. Then, the dad just needs

So he tried to go on his schools online library app. He checked it out just fine, but ironically, the offline reading function only works on the now-disallowed iPads.

Well, that is totally unreasonable and there might even be some legal cause of action there. That ONE kind of eBook-reader should be disallowed but not another that was previously allowed. Time to contact someone who can do things at the school, make the complaint, and such, Or pull the kid from that school and send them somewhere that doesn't have a Luddite administration.

I tried to explain format shifting, and the injustice of the current copyright framework in America. Even when he did his own research, stumbling across EFF's website on fair use, he still would not believe me.

Arguing that you feel the current legal framework is unfair is not the way to make someone believe you, now is it?

Well, Technically it is a gray area. If you own the print copy of the book you can use a version that someone else scanned or converted to PDF and gave to you, and it's likely claimable fair use for you to use the extra copy for your own personal usage only ---- Any person who uploaded or shared the bootleg version probably did something illegal, but not you.

My suggestion would be to get advice from an attorney.... then you can tell your kid "Copyright law has some complicated exceptions called fair use, and only a professional lawyer is qualified to fully advise on a defensible position for certain actions; Upon the advise from my lawyer I am legally in the clear (or not) to download and use a bootleg copy of the same book I already purchased for my own personal use, as long as I don't further redistribute, share it, or copy it.".

I don't buy digital media unless I can remove the DRM. Kindle files are easy, and last time I checked my Snow Leopard VM running iTunes 10.7 and Requiem still worked (for 1080P content, not 4K) - although movies on Blu-Ray tend to be cheaper than digital versions, and the physical disc serves as a backup for the ripped version I immediately generate and store on our in-house streaming server.

How do I explain all that to my daughter? I tell her I believe that once I've bought something, it should be mine to

_My_ kids saw me spending weeks Ripping all my DVD's & CD's so that we could watch/listen without having to search for waylaid disks (as in why is this CD in this case & where is the disk that was supposed to be here. As I continued to buy new physical content and just backed it up to digital storage, they could see that the objective was NOT to rip-off the authors but to digitize what we purchase.

DRM on EBooks is the main reason I either purchase content that is already non-DRM encumbered or, If I cannot find it without DRM, I purchase it in a DRM scheme that has been broken (Kindle eBooks) & convert the DRM'ed content to a non-encumbered format (EPubs with Calibre. I then delete the DRM encumbered copy.

Apple's Fairplay not having been broken, it's DRM makes it impossible to do so, so I don't buy eBooks through Apple.

Watch this episode of The Brittas Empire [youtube.com] (which is itself illegally offered for free viewing on Youtube, incidentally - oh the irony) and your son will learn all there is to know about copyright.

I have music I bought on 8 track (Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Led Zep, UFO), then bought the album (my music buying exploded about this time, an album a week), then in some cases bought the CD. I have some 3500 CDs. It's easier to download the MP3 of a CD I own than it is to dig through boxes in a closet, find the CD, and rip it myself. Have I broken copyright law? I'm sure the MAFIAA will say HELL YES!, but I'm not so sure. Where is the line? Own the CD, download the MP3? Own the LP, download the MP3? Own the 8-track, download the MP3?

IMHO, I bought the IP already. To me I'm not breaking any laws. Those who get money from the buying of 8-tracks->LPs->cassettes->CDs think otherwise. I think they're thinking is greedy and they need to cut back on the coke and hookers they consume.

Copyright law is about sucking as much $$$ out of people as it can, not what is right.

We won't even get into the CDs that sounded worse than the LPs. *cough* Nektar - Remember the future, *cough* Black Sabbath - Paranoid, *cough* I can come up with dozens of other examples where they rushed out a CD that sounded like crap cuz, well, people wanted their LPs on:"A better sounding format".

Copyright's are easy to explain and understand. You don't copy stuff that you didn't produce yourself, without permission.

Fair use laws... That's the problem here. They don't make sense to the average person.

So... I can buy an MP3 of a song and play it in my house, in my car, privately all day long, but I cannot play it in public or use it in my business... Except if my business use is considered "fair Use". So I can play this song as a background for my Christmas light display, for the public, as long as I'm not charging admission or being paid for it. I can play the song in a church service, but I may not broadcast that song or distribute recordings of the song being played in the service without a license. I can write a review of the song, even including a small portion of the song in my review, but I may not play the entire song...

Then there is the whole Internet bastion of sites like U-Tube where you seemingly can do anything you want with the song, including splicing in other copyrighted material (video, pictures and the like) without any permission, but only because U-Tube is paying the license fees for you, unless they don't, or you distribute your material some other way... Unless it is considered public domain in the first place because the artist has been dead long enough.

Copyright's are easy to explain and understand. You don't copy stuff that you didn't produce yourself, without permission.

Fair use laws... That's the problem here. They don't make sense to the average person.

If that is how you think of copyright then you don't understand copyright at all. Fair use laws exist because the "simple" version of copyright, you have stated it, is fundamentally and obviously wrong and would never be accepted by the public. Don't just take my word for it; the fair use doctrine in the U.S. came about precisely because the Supreme Court recognized that copyright sans fair use infringed on the freedom of speech. There are many situations where it is plainly unreasonable to expect anyone to

The reality is IP law is so out of control you need to sit down and get a good reason as to why it's bullshit.

Teach him about the theft of PC games and show him most wanted 2005 and NFS world online - same game but just rebranded for corporations to take control of the files on their servers. The reality is the corporate world has been stealing everything that is

And I insisted on it. She was upset because a) I pull her leg a lot and b) I kept insisting for years. Around the time she learned to use the internet she came to me in a huff and said "You're a software pirate!".

Sadly me piratin' days be over. I use legally obtained copies of all the software I have, even the games. Steam & Gog made piracy obsolete. And it's not worth the trouble to pirate Microsoft OSes.

You could explain that illegal is not necessarily immoral, especially in a case where you've paid for the content.

You could encourage him to choose books from authors who don't publish with DRM, which is probably the best way for any individual to influence the market. But won't get him this book and is probably over his head.

Or you could just put the book on his Kindle and not tell him how you did it, since it sounds like he's going to drop a dime on you if you tell him you downloaded it. Maybe download 1984 for him while you're at it.

The first step is to demonstrate that what is legal and what is moral are not coextensive.
Once one understands that the law is at best a compromise, and its formation subject to the whims of the powerful, typically preserving, if not aggravating, the divisions in our societies, then copyright makes perfect sense.

Well son, a long time ago, here in the US, some very smart people decided to give the government the power to tell its citizens that making copies of other people's work is illegal. The intent was to make sure that ideas weren't stolen and sold under someone else's name. They called this power "copyright" and it had a time limit of fourteen years. Every time this time limit was set to expire, however, the government extended this time limit longer, and longer, and longer, and expanded what it meant more and

Explain to him that it is damage to information. The internet will route around said damage.

Honestly the only time pay for copyrighted material is when the owner doesn't make it a pain in the ass process and isn't a dick about it on price.

For example my engineering books. They want in many cases nearly $200 for the hard copy and even more for some sort of limited digital access. So I go online download a pirated PDF and buy the book. If the book sucks or is not used much in the course, I'll just ge

I was raised in a (professionally) political family. That meant that as a kid, I understood that it was my parents' job to write or change laws. Laws can change. Some laws are bad. Some laws used to be good, and now aren't. Most of the rules and laws we actually interact with are local. Many more people work on local laws than state or national laws. That's a good place to start.

Next, morality. Your son has good moral instincts. Don't discourage that! Generally, you shouldn't do anything you don't want other people knowing about. If you have to keep it secret to keep being who you want to be, don't do it.

Finally, breaking the rules. Sometimes you find you need to break a rule. You know that something is right, and you don't care what society or the law says about it. In that case, you need to be ready to accept the consequences.

In this case, what are the consequences of violating copyright laws? What are the consequences of violating the school rules? Why are you more willing to violate a federal law than a school rule? (As a parent, I know that my child will be punished for me breaking a school rule. In that situation, I'm also happy to try to take any consequences myself.) These are good lessons on how society actually works.

My best advice to you is that you have your strongest voice as a citizen in local government, which includes your school. Teach your child to engage in a productive way with government by example. Don't simply accept what the government is telling you to do. That's not how our system is supposed to work. The solution here is to get your school to change their rules. Start with a teacher, then the principle, then up from there.

First of all, let me say that your son's attitude is a very good sign. Teenagers often engage in very black-or-white thinking, with little tolerance for anything in between. The only thing that will break them out of this is real world experience. It is excellent that he cares about doing the right thing.

Second, get some good firsthand historical accounts. Let him read for himself what leaders of rebellions were thinking when they led their rebellions. He will quickly learn that many of them were actually

> I found a bootleg PDF online. I tried to explain that he could just read that, but he freaked out. "That's illegal, Dad!"

Sounds to me his indoctrination is going well. Good job! And most slashdotters agree from what I see here in the comments section, and what's worse they're mixing concepts of legality with morality. Mother of God, save us.

Submitting to stupidity (or even worse, indoctrinating your kids and then tapping them on the back when they submit to stupidity) is everything what's wrong

The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.

Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.

If you are worried about the education get a tutor and do some homework with the kid, but 8 hours a day learning reading, writing, social studies, math, and science from Mom & Dad doesn't prepare them for any sort of real world.

And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad... and frankly the fact that he is intelligently debating with his kid about the ethics of copyright is probably the best possible outcome.

The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.

Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.

And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad

do you have any data/study that demonstrate kids exposed to social world of a real world community, including among other things, "church, sports, and social field trips" etc, are less exposed to reality, than kids who grow up in extremely juvenile social world of american public high school(an artificial world of recent construction, very different from "real" world")?

also , given the snow-flaky behavior of kids coming who come out of public schools, who loudly, and sometimes violently, demand they want to

The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.

Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time

Can you cite any evidence that this is true? With five minutes of googling I located research that found homeschoolers equally or slightly better socialized, according to several different metrics, and none that found they were worse.

Anecdotally i've seen both, some are very well socialized and others not so much. I think many homeschool parents are hyper conscious about this and compensate with other socialization.

I just cant imagine how you keep up with curriculum. I look at the stuff i did in high school and i'm still rather surprised at how much you can learn at 16/17 - I knew way more math then than I do now. I'm sure i could get back to a place where i could understand differential equations myself, but that assumes my child wants

Home schooling does't mean the parents are the sole teachers. Many home schoolers use online courses, including Khan Academy and other resources. Many work in groups with other home schooled kids with parents rotating to teach their area of expertise.

Disclaimer: My kids attend public school, but I supplement that with plenty of learning at home (rockets, robots, programming, explosives, etc.).

Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.

So let me get this straight. Starting in public Middle/Jr High school preteens begin to be stratified into caste systems and are socialized by peers that they âoecannotâ accept those one year or two years under them.
Middle and high school students spend the majority of their time in a fixed location away from the âoepublic.â
Meanwhile kids being homeschooled and participating in coops are socializing with a wide variety of pre teens and teens regardless of their year in school. The

I'm just waiting for Amazon or Disney to state that consuming any content, anywhere, anyhow, in any shape or form is copyright and patent infringement and that damages must immediately be paid to them.

Australia just legalized "gay marriage." How do you cover that event without mentioning "gay marriage"? "Australia just passed a law... We won't say exactly what it is, because we don't want to take a side. Anyway, that's what they're out celebrating. Their new law that shall not be named."

Affirmative action is discrimination.

Well, now we know your side. Let's hope the teachers are more balanced than you.

Illegal immigration is illegal, so there is no other side.

Again, we can infer your side. The question of what to do with people who live here without legal status has no obvious, indisputable answer.

Yeah, he should pay over and over again for the same content for every device he wants to use it on.Because downloading something you already have a license for is illegal. (arguably, depending on the technology used to obtain it, downloading the copy isn't illegal, it's the person running the server that is)Because circumventing copy protections to make a legitimate format shift is illegal. Not because you made a copy though, That's perfectly legal.

1. Explain that people need homes, because it's very cold in the winter.

2. Explain that you need money to have homes.

3. Explain that there are lots of creative people who create content in order to make money. ("Artists")

4. Explain that they only make money if people pay them to create the content.

5. Explain that the people who pay them to create the content ("Producers") also need money to have homes.

6. Explain that the Producers will only have money to have homes if they can get paid for selling the content to people.

7. Explain that the only reason Producers can get paid for selling the content to people is because of copyright, since stuff is cheap to copy.

8. Turn this into a lesson about the evolution of text and music and art in history, the printing press and the phonograph and the camera, and how over time it became more and more accessible and cheaper to copy content.

9. Explain the Sony Betamax suit that those producers lost allowing people to "time shift" and how this is an extension of that same decision.

10. Explain the concepts of the public domain and why that is the sole reason for the existence of copyright.

11. Explain how those producers lobbied (read bribed) legislators to extend copyright to the point that nothing will be released to the public domain in his lifetime.

12. Explain that the DMCA was created by those same politicians in the same manor as the extensions to try and prevent format shifting.

13. Explain what the definition of greed is (on both sides of this issue).